My view is perhaps a bit limited because I'm in the software industry. Are other industries represented fairly well by the current laws and is it only the software industry that are demanding changes?
Though government is adept at yielding to special interest and industry groups, fundamental change may be difficult to hope for if the software industry is the lone voice at this point.
It's not even the software industry generally. My background is in embedded software (military radios, heavy-duty network infrastructure), and I never saw that kind of opposition. I got my degree in aerospace engineering, and even among university kids nobody ever questioned the validity of the patent system or the fact that the university took out patents, etc.
I think the difference is that most engineering industries are very capital intensive. Defending the occasional patent lawsuit doesn't seem so onerous when your capital expenditures are measured in the hundreds of millions or billions.
Though government is adept at yielding to special interest and industry groups, fundamental change may be difficult to hope for if the software industry is the lone voice at this point.